Killed or sent to Australia

Abstract

Killed or sent to Australia Ryan Shek Tom Keneally . The Dickens Boy. Sydney: Penguin Random House Australia, 2020. 392 pp., $33.00. ISBN: 978 1 76089 319 4 Authors of fiction draw on their lives and relationships to mimic the look, touch, and feel of real human experience—so much so that a person who has lived in proximity to an author, maybe as a lover or friend or child, can sometimes find an unexpected and embarrassing audit of their own faults, abilities, and shortcomings in the author's prose. It is an uncomfortable and seldomdiscussed consequence of creating art that so closely parallels lived reality: that real people tend to recognize themselves in it. In many ways, this premise is what propels the plot of Thomas Keneally's 2020 book The Dickens Boy , a work of historical fiction that reimagines the youngest son of the literary icon Charles Dickens and his adventures through the Australian Outback. Readers familiar with Dickens's work may instantly recognize Australia as a farflung place of the British Empire, where wretched and ruined souls converge to find redemption and station in their troubled lives. See Abel Magwitch from Great Expectations, John Edmunds from Pickwick Papers , Wackford Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby, and in Dickens's own life, two of his sons, Alfred and Edward. In Dickens's time, Australia ostensibly represented a life better suited to the Dickens boys' skills and interests, but as Keneally's book suggests, it was also a good, faraway place where two underachieving children could avoid tarnishing their father's great reputation. It does not take the son of an immortal literary figure to recognize Australia as a land of banishment and redemption in Dickens's work. This fact is not lost on at least one of the Dickens boys, Alfred, who in Keneally's novel speculates for the first time what his being sent away to Australia truly means in the context of his father's literary work: "Look, if he wants to get rid of someone in his books, he either kills them or sends them to Australia," Alfred, the older of the two Dickens brothers, says. "I wasn't aware of that," Edward replies, adding hopefully, "But it's only his imagination, isn't it?" (208). Charles Dickens's literary legacy casts a long shadow over Keneally's book as well as over the lives of its characters. The book's protagonist, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known in the Dickens family as Plorn, spends much of his time navigating the tension between his father's great celebrity and the unexceptional texture of his own life. Having spent his boyhood largely unfocused and struggling in England, Plorn is sent thousands of miles away to a remote station in New South Wales. His charge in Van Diemen's Land is to become a man amid a cast of Paakantji, colonists, ex-convicts, and soldiers. He is also charged with finding a purpose and sparing his father the shame of an unproductive life. This is a tough expectation for anyone to fulfill, let alone Plorn, who cannot help but measure himself against his father's great achievements. After all, there is simply no escaping them. Dickens's star is so bright that it shines in even the remotest corners of Australia. A charming catch of Keneally's novel is Plorn's surprising unfamiliarity with his father's work. He has never read a single book, let alone any of his father's. (It is the modern equivalent of Michael Jordan's children never watching one of his basketball games.) [End Page 150] This fact is preposterous and infinitely entertaining. It also puts Plorn in a number of uncomfortable social situations in which the cream of his character is forced to rise to the top. In fact, the great strength of this book is its young narrator's charm. Immediately upon arriving in Australia, Plorn applies himself earnestly in a difficult trade and is constantly deflecting his father's greatness. He also has an abiding sense of justice and is wily and entertaining in conversation. Plorn's naivety, goodwill, and earnestness soften the harsh world around him, and he is determined...